“Darling, must you wear those when we make love? A little cross dressing is one thing, but pink frills – it’s so kitsch”.

“They belonged to my mother. She taught me to recycle everything”.

“Well you’d better not wear them to the Television studio. And for Gaia’s sake don’t say anything bad about Green”.

Thomas grunted. He’d wear what he bloody well like. Who would know, under his designer jeans? No-one, except that cute little assistant personal assistant’s assistant of Paxo’s, if he got the chance, after the interview.

I tried something similar once in Steve McIntyre and the Forrest of Lies:It was a dark and stormy night. It was the worst of times. 'Call me Steve', the young-at-heart statistics wizard wrote to his diary as the clocks struck thirteen....Steve woke up and ran down to his study and booted up his computer in a blink. There was nothing from Captain Mann in the inbox. Not even a twit. There was however a new post in Surreal Realm. 'All wizards are equal, but some wizards are more equal than others', it screeched ominously....'Deus ex machina!', Steve marveled laudably as the Gates of the Realm opened to the howls of shock and disbelief to the Barbarians manning the rams. 'It is a miracle, my dear McKitrick! We won this battle, but there will be many more ahead. Let's go home.'http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/2/18/another-gig.html

As someone immersed in science and maths since my youth it took me quite a while later to realise that the 'Arts' can supply insight and at least illustrate hypotheses on the whats and hows and whys of human behaviour. Geoff Chamber's new blog reinforces that in the context of the CO2 and climate drama which has been on centre stage in recent decades. And with humour to boot!

John Shade:As someone immersed in science and maths since my youth it took me quite a while later to realise that the 'Arts' can supply insight and at least illustrate hypotheses on the whats and hows and whys of human behaviour.

Noam Chomsky, who is Richard Lindzen's MIT colleague and a strong asset to the CAGW cult's interests of late, had this reply to a question, quite memorably, IMHO:

In your new book, you suggest that many components of human nature are just too complicated to be really researchable.

That's a pretty normal phenomenon. Take, say, physics, which restricts itself to extremely simple questions. If a molecule becomes too complex, they hand it over to the chemists. If it becomes too complex for them, they hand it to biologists. And if the system is too complex for them, they hand it to psychologists ... and so on until it ends up in the hands of historians or novelists. As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

sHx,... and if the novelists and historians can't hack it, we deal with it here. Another leftist? I thought he was the only (outed) one. Encouraging to this Obamaite, although I'd imagine O is a lot more conservative than most of the non-leftists realize. But that's for some other venue.

sHx Chomsky’s dismissal of climate change scepticism as being “the result of a propaganda offensive by the business lobby” is depressing. But, to paraphrase slightly what he says about linguistics: “climate change scepticism is a living field. If you believe today what you believed five years ago, either the field is dead or you are”.

To the shx comment at 10:58 on Noam Chomsky, that is systems thinking that is Marxist in its belief that we are evolving towards ever more complex societies. The complexity comes from the fact that systems thinkers want to radically redesign social systems like economies, people (they call us socio-technical systems), society itself, based on the nonsensical idea that a vision plus power can make it so. Like what Jean-Luc Picard used to say to Number One on Star Trek.

I have been writing about the systems thinking work Chomsky's colleagues, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer, have been pushing in both Big Business and education globally. It rejects the Enlightenment view of science in favor of a unified science that includes human social systems. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/second-order-change-why-reform-is-a-misnomer-for-the-real-common-core/ is a good intro on where and how systems thinking is planning a Transformative Revolution without our consent.

When pushed recently on the Gaia spirituality component being troublesome for a classroom, the systems thinking advocates defense was to argue this is all based on Jay Forester's systems dynamics work done in the Limits to Growth travesty for Club of Rome that most of us know to be nonsense contrived to hype for power.

Well we may know that but it is back in classrooms where instilling the belief in young impressionable minds that they are merely part of a much broader system can have life-long effects on behavior. Telling kids that all their actions impact others will have a hobbling permanent effect.

Sounds like Chomsky has the memo that systems thinking gets to the same restructuring and control as more notorious political ideologies. You can imagine how much I appreciated a defense to a church/state encroachment charge that intentionally embraced the Club of Rome as the appeal to authority. Why of course they should be the inspiration for classroom activity with small children.

I am glad we have Geoff's humor and satirical writing. There is clearly an organized, coordinated effort afoot in which education and the AGW/Climate Change modelling are useful tools. Which is why it is important we confer and swap stories and strategies being used on us.

Apologies to Peter Dunford. I’ve been living out of the country for 30 years and my humour is limited to vaguely remembered sketches by Morecambe and Wise and the two Ronnies. (Apparently the same is true of other readers of BH).

A scientific colleague was a very good downhill skiier. As the snow melted, his hot pants would wet in anticipation of the next season of virgin powder. One day he confused the interface between science and imagination, believing for a time that with sufficient speed, adequate slope and a good headwind, he could soar rather like a hang glider (whose Japanese equivilant we photographed on a sign in Kagoshima as 'hung rider').He broke his leg. End of parable.

There is no confusion with hot and pants. Just ask the lady how she lost her hyphen.I'll welcome any Geoff who spells his given name correctly. In USA I get "Gee-off" like a call to set a horse moving. By a twist of fate, whenever I do CtrlF then Geoff on the keyboard, I get you quite often. Regrettably, the reverse will apply.